tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36986548.post5760360899611338188..comments2023-10-21T03:56:17.837-07:00Comments on Zen Buddhism Dogen and the Shobogenzo: Dogen and the Wild Fox - Shobogenzo Dai-Shugyo - Great PracticeTed Biringerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00497538623775589400noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36986548.post-65124490605377425822008-07-01T00:33:00.000-07:002008-07-01T00:33:00.000-07:00Hello Mike,Thank you for that last comment.Ha! I l...Hello Mike,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for that last comment.<BR/><BR/>Ha! I literally laughed until it hurt when I read the last paragraph, where you wrote:<BR/><BR/>"So, like deaf old men, trying to discern a far-off signal, using small transistor radios with batteries that are almost flat, we persevere... until eventually one day we hear a human voice repeatedly telling us something in a foreign language: ....NI ARAZU! ....NI ARAZU! We look it up in the dictionary and the message translates as: <BR/><BR/>Not it!"<BR/><BR/>That is one of the truest statements concerning the human condition that I have ever read! <BR/><BR/>Moreover, while it accurately (at least in my view) presents a truth that raises some serious questions regarding the intelligence behind much of the behavior of human beings, it does so in a manner that somehow sheds a light on just how endearing such questionable behavior is! <BR/><BR/>It reminds me of the astronaut that hit the golf ball on the moon. When I first saw that, I thought, "How childish. He is making a joke of all the time and effort and money that went into sending a "man to the moon." Then I thought, "Why did we spend all the time and effort and money that went into sending a man to the moon?" Suddenly, the act of hitting that golf ball seemed like one of the most beautiful demonstrations of humanity I had ever witnessed.<BR/><BR/>In some of the Native American traditions, the trickster figures often do things that are so bizzare or quirky that all one can do is laugh.<BR/><BR/>I love it when "the gods" or "teachers" of any tradition does or says something that reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously. It is almost as if they are saying, "Don't forget to have some fun!"<BR/><BR/>For me, the humor displayed by many of the classic Zen masters was, and continues to be one of reasons that I am so drawn Zen.<BR/><BR/>I have discerned this humor in Master Dogen also (though it took a few years). I sense it mostly in some of his rhetorical questions, and also in the way he leads us to the "logical conclusions" of wrong views and thereby demonstrates its inadequecy. For instance, as in this paragraph you translated from Shobogenzo, Dai-Shugyo:<BR/><BR/>"If falling into the body of a wild fox were the inevitable karmic result of mistakenly answering a practitioner’s question, then the Rinzais and Tokuzans of recent times, together with their followers, would have fallen into how many thousands and tens of thousands of wild foxes? Aside from them, the unreliable old veterans of the last two or three hundred years would be countless wild foxes. Yet none are heard to have fallen into wild foxes. So many [wild foxes] would be more than enough to see and hear."<BR/><BR/>It seems clear to me that there is a needle in this ball of cotton. Ha!<BR/><BR/>Thanks again! (I hope it is okay to quote that paragraph of your comment elsewhere..?..).<BR/><BR/>Take good care. And don't forget to have fun!<BR/><BR/>Gassho,<BR/>TedTed Biringerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00497538623775589400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36986548.post-31159703327585429122008-06-30T07:14:00.000-07:002008-06-30T07:14:00.000-07:00Thank you, Ted. The Alexander teacher Marjory Barl...Thank you, Ted. <BR/><BR/>The Alexander teacher Marjory Barlow used to say to me: "This work, if you really do it, keeps you humble. If you really do it."<BR/><BR/>I think, and it sounds like you would agree with me, that the same can be said of reading Shobogenzo, with a view to clarifying, for oneself, what Master Dogen is really saying: If we really do it, it keeps us humble. If we really do it. <BR/><BR/>I have just been re-translating the "Time, as Existence" chapter, and as I ploughed through one particularly long and challenging paragraph, I began to ask myself whether it was worth it or not. What was the point of it? It didn't seem to be going anywhere. Just relentless difficult exposition of one difficult-to-understand view, only to negate it in the next breath. As a male human being, I have evolved to chase women and hunt and eat animals, not to find enjoyment in amibiguosly going nowhere in the negation of one view after another. <BR/><BR/>I do not know why we bother -- except that probably we can't help sensing that Master Dogen is struggling to communicate to us, as truly as he can, what had been truly communicated to him. <BR/><BR/>So, like deaf old men, trying to discern a far-off signal, using small transistor radios with batteries that are almost flat, we persevere... until eventually one day we hear a human voice repeatedly telling us something in a foreign language: ....NI ARAZU! ....NI ARAZU! We look it up in the dictionary and the message translates as: <BR/><BR/>Not it!Mike Crosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12712396374023835678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36986548.post-42229100160013111432008-06-30T01:21:00.000-07:002008-06-30T01:21:00.000-07:00Hello Mike,Thank you for your thoughtful comment!E...Hello Mike,<BR/><BR/>Thank you for your thoughtful comment!<BR/><BR/>Ever since your translation of Book 1 of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, I have kept a copy nearby. I continued to study it and try to apply its teachings as I anticipated the release of each new translation. <BR/><BR/>I read whatever translations I could get my hands on, trying to practice what I could. The Shobogenzo has opened whole new realms of experience for me...<BR/><BR/>But if I have learned anything, it is that "todays understanding" is not "tomorrows" understanding.<BR/><BR/>Often, I write with a kind of "positive voice" because it helps me to stay focused on what I am trying to communicate. At the same time, there is almost nothing about Master Dogen, or the Shobogenzo that I would be willing to say, I "know" what he is saying here. While there may be some things I feel confident that he is "not saying", what he does say always seems to have a deeper, more profound layer after another year of practice and study...<BR/><BR/>And when someone (like you) shares their own insight and experience, it often opens up new possiblities that I have not considered.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for reminding me to stay open to different perspectives. Thank you also for offering your insight and suggestions based on your own deep experience with Master Dogen's Shobogenzo.<BR/><BR/>Gassho,<BR/><BR/>TedTed Biringerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00497538623775589400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36986548.post-52677737973907619802008-06-28T02:00:00.000-07:002008-06-28T02:00:00.000-07:00Hi Ted, I stopped by and felt glad that the Nishij...Hi Ted, <BR/><BR/>I stopped by and felt glad that the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo is being utilized in this very sincere and meticulous way. My feelings, however, are rarely reliable! <BR/><BR/>Our tendency to assume easily and hastily that we have understood what Master Dogen is saying, based on conventions of which we may not even be aware, does indeed run very deep in us, and it is generally hidden from us. Who, in the end, is the beggar of the fourth dhyana? A historical person? Or a metaphor for a tendency in me, who is prone to assume without reason that he is somebody who has got somewhere and understood something? <BR/><BR/>Forgive me for not reading everything in detail, but scanning through what you have written, I felt happy to read the following: <BR/><BR/>Dogen exhorts us to examine the question meticulously, avoiding the tendency to bypass the subtler wisdom within the question by assuming the "easy" or "hasty" conventional meaning.<BR/><BR/>Dogen does not want us to simply take his word for it, but to investigate the matter intimately through nonthinking.<BR/><BR/>A comment of yours, and accompanying translation, in contrast, that struck me as being dubious were the following. <BR/><BR/>Dogen never concedes that anything is a matter of this or that. "When one side is illumined, the other side is darkened." (Genjokoan)<BR/><BR/>For one thing, your intention here seems to be to express a kind of dogmatic view about non-dogmatism. I think Master Dogen's response to such a view would always be to subvert it, through non-thinking, or on the basis of anti-thinking.<BR/><BR/>For another thing, IPPO O SHO SURU TOKI literally means "when [we] EXPERIENCE one side." So a more literal translation is: "While we are experiencing one side, the other side is darkened." <BR/><BR/>In this sentence of Genjo-koan, as I understand it, Master Dogen is discussing how we experience the world through the senses, as opposed to prajna. For example, when, in the realm of experiencing sensual pleasure/pain, we are in bed with a woman with whom (to coin a phrase of Gudo's) we have "fallen into love," our whole being may be captivated by her gorgeous form, and our whole being may be rung like a bell by her voice, but that experience, intimate though it is, is not prajna. Prajna, typified by what goes on between water and moon, is absolutely a matter of this and that -- a matter of water being absolutely water, and moon being absolutely moon. In the realm of the senses, our experience is partial, one-sided, emotionally biased. Experience of prajna may not necessarily be so, but our experience in the sensual realm is always blinkered and relative. That, I think, is the point of the sentence in question. In the realm of the sensory experience, there are no absolutes. But there may be other realms. So to say absolutely that there are no absolutes, is never it.Mike Crosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12712396374023835678noreply@blogger.com